Full-Fledged Stars
Despite their disabilities, Paralympic athletes display all the Olympic ideals.
By Jeanie Franco Marx
star with a point missing that's the core of the 1996 Paralympics Games logo.
Completing the picture, an Olympic flame arcs from point to point, igniting the
determination that creates win ners. "Starfire" is an apt symbol for the 3,500
disabled athletes representing 127 countries.Come Aug. 15, champion swimmers will compete at Georgia Tech's Aquatic Center, while other events will pepper Atlanta, the first U.S. city to host the Paralympic Games.
Launched in 1948 at England's Stoke-Mandeville Hospital to coincide with the London-based Olympic Games, the Paralympics got off to a rocky start until 1960 in Rome, when it became an official quadrennial event. Since then, it's grown from 23 countries t o 127 and from limited wheelchair sports to 17. They include track and field, basketball, cycling, swimming, weightlifting, tennis, fencing, rowing and judo.
These athletes perform a balancing act, trying to keep their lives in sync. Despite daily workouts and training practice that eat up large chunks of each day with virtually no leisure time they still find time to work. That means extremely long days. Unf ortunately, family life suffers when you commit yourself to becoming a world-class athlete.
Among the Paralympics champions who will compete in Atlanta's 1996 Games are Trischa Zorn, elementary school teacher and swimmer with 10 Barcelona gold medals; Scot Hollonbeck, Coca-Cola Olympic sports marketing coordinator and gold-medal wheelchair racer in the 4 x 400-meter and 800-meter events; and Linda Mastandrea, attorney/advocate for the disabled and national track-and-field champion, voted U.S. Cerebral Palsy Athletic Association "Athlete of the Year" in '93 and '95.
Born with anaridia, the absence of an iris, Zorn is legally blind. (She has 20/1000 vision, which means she sees at 1,000 feet what someone with perfect vision sees at 20.) Yet she learned to compete with non-disabled swimmers at age 7. "I wasn't treated like a child with a disability," she recalls. "Even now I don't draw attention to it." Like a chameleon, she adjusts to her environment. "Adapting is my middle name."
As a youngster, her dedication led to trophies and a positive self-image, but it also meant missed proms, dates and other social events. "You lose your childhood," she says. Each day began at 4 a.m. and ended at 8:30 p.m. "I'd fall asleep while eating di nner."
And staying in school wasn't easy. Mainstreaming visually handicapped students was new, and most of her California teachers discouraged it. "They wouldn't let me copy notes and said I was cheating." But she remained in public school until officials finally provided large-print books and other tools. Meanwhile, Zorn became a top competitor at Mission Viejo High.
Her tenacity led to success: a spot on the University of Nebraska-Lincoln women's swim team, top grades and world travel via competition. She won two golds, two silvers and a bronze medal at the IV World Masters Swimming Championships, set 12 world recor ds at the World Championships for the Disabled in Holland (1990), was named "Indianapolis Woman of the Year" and tagged "Golden Girl" at the 1988 Seoul Paralympic Games.
Today, she teaches the mildly mentally handicapped in grades 1-5 at an inner-city Indianapolis school. "If I can make a difference with one or two kids a year, I'll feel I've accomplished something."
With a Master's in school administration from Indiana University/Purdue University at Indianapolis, Zorn hopes to involve parents of the disabled in their future by making them aware of legislation.
During the Games, she'll compete in the backstroke and butterfly 10 events in 9 days. Her current goal: to break as many of her own records as possible. "The first three days it's exciting, then it's difficult to be rested and keep your mental attitude." She calls the breast stroke the hardest event. "You use different muscles, technique and rhythm.
"Swimming's a very strategic sport." When competing, she imagines where she wants to be and somehow knows, despite her lack of vision, who is faster. "It's instinct and comes from a lot of training." She calls it "mental toughness."
Zorn will retire after the Atlanta Games because she's interested in coaching, traveling and time for herself. "I've done everything I've set out to do. It's time to move on."
When told he couldn't walk, run or win, he "ate that challenge. I wanted to prove I could do better than others." Paralyzed from the waist down, he was forced to watch his brother compete while he couldn't. "I went from being the best to not making the t eam five years," he recalls. Yet those crushing disappointments prepared him mentally for the training to follow.
A young athlete uses a sport to enter the adult world, says Hollonbeck. Because he could no longer walk, he did not qualify for the high school track team. But he fought back with three lawsuits. "They told me I didn't fit in," he recalls.
Although Hollonbeck was already in college when the legal battle ended, he was a winner once again. The court declared his omission from school competitions to be discriminatory, setting a legal precedent and paving the way for other disabled athletes.
At the University of Illinois, which boasts a state-of-the-art program for the disabled, Hollonbeck learned a new sport: wheelchair basketball. In '90 and '91 he was voted "Most Valuable Player" and in '92 the National Wheelchair Athletic Association nam ed him "Athlete of the Year."
Meanwhile he kept his grades high, won academic achievement awards, completed a bachelor's in kinesiology and a graduate degree in sports sociology. With all this he still found time to direct an annual racing clinic at an Illinois wheelchair sports camp for kids.
Today, the 26-year-old champion believes his injury contributed to his success as an athlete. "I love racing," says the Atlanta resident. "It has exposed me to so much. In life, there are so many different paths you can take."
Now he merely wants others to accept him as a person, not a chair. "The hard part of a disability is other people's attitudes."
His most difficult race in the Atlanta Paralympics? The 800-meter. He calls the two-minute sprint "a complete burn." At the euphoric finish his speed reaches 17-21 mph. "The chair and I become one. I feel very free."
He likes the danger, the challenge, the speed and the energy. "I'm inches away from someone else." Such proximity sometimes leads to accidents and bloody results, like the '93 collision in which he broke both arms. But he doesn't look back.
He wants a shot at the Games in Sydney, Australia, and maybe the 2004 Games, when he's 34.
At Coca-Cola, where he heads a global marketing effort for Olympic sports, Hollonbeck hopes to be a factor in developing disabled athletes for Coke's creative advertising.
Like many world-class athletes, Scot Hollonbeck's life is a balancing act. Juggling athletics, work, family and personal life is his primary challenge. "If you're lopsided, you fail."
At the University of Illinois, spraining an ankle while walking, she met her future coach, Brad Hedrick, who tried to recruit her for the women's wheelchair basketball team.
After a year of indecision she "gave in to get him off my back," she laughs. "I was petrified. I'm not a great player, and it changed my perception of myself; I found I could be athletic."
That confidence carried her through college, law school and six years of world competition. By then, she switched to wheelchair racing, winning two gold and silver medals from the 1993 Stoke-Mandeville Games and becoming national champion in the 100-, 20 0-, 400-, 800- and 1,500-meter races.
For her accomplishments, the National Italian-American Sports Hall of Fame honored her with a special achievement award, and Today's Chicago Women magazine named her one of the "Top 100 Women to Watch" in 1993.
Despite her success, she was not allowed to compete at Barcelona because only five women showed up. Competition consisted exclusively of track-and-field exhibition events, and she finished first in the 100- and 400-meter sprints, missing the world record by hundredths of a second.
Her greatest challenge: being accepted as an athlete, attorney and woman. "Disability comes way down the list," she says. "All people see is the chair." She wants to be treated as a peer, not patted on the head or put on a pedestal.
"When people first meet me, they're surprised I finished law school. I have 'X' amount of world records, but it doesn't make a difference. People don't understand that it takes the same abilities for me to be a good athlete as Jackie Joyner-Kersee."
In addition to athletics, Mastandrea practices law she has her own practice advocates rights for the disabled, takes care of her mother (who has Alzheimer's) and works part-time as a college rehab center typist to qualify for health insurance.
"Competition has become a big piece of my personality," she reveals. But that doesn't stop the butterflies before a race. Mastandrea's first training camp in '91 made her cocky about winning. "I went to nationals and got spanked," she recalls. "I thought , 'These women are never gonna beat me again!' And they haven't."
She plans to compete as long as she performs well. "I want to see where my edge is." Such athletic progress amazes her and has changed her self-image. "I looked at where I was two years after my first race, when I was picked for the Paralympics, and four years later I've blown away my own (racing) times."
Her most difficult race: the 100-meter sprint. Because it's the shortest, it's difficult to get started, but she has good acceleration. Once she gets going, it's sheer momentum. And nobody can stop her.